Excellence and Inclusiveness

This policy is tailored to bring out excellence in science Europe-wide and clear away obstacles by creating cooperation opportunities for researchers, engineers and scholars from all COST Member Countries.

Features

Through bottom-up, open and excellence-driven COST Actions and activities, the policy nurtures talent and creativity.

It is developed around three main elements:

geographical spread

career stage: involving early career investigators

gender balance

Geographical spread includes less research-intensive COST Member Countries. They are entitled COST Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITCs) (Countries in bold are represented in MitoEAGLE) :

Effects of ischemia and preconditioning with proton pump inhibitors on functional recovery in isolated rat heart

Conference Grant

As mentioned above, COST will dedicate 50% of its overall budget to activities involving researchers from Inclusiveness Target Countries. Especially by fully developing and implementing its Inclusiveness Policy, COST aims to increase such researchers’ participation in COST Actions and activities, in relation to the European Commission’s approach to widening participation.

Therefore, a new COST networking tool called Conference Grants was added. Those Conference Grants are aimed at supporting PhD students and ECI researchers from Participating ITC

to attend international science and technology related conferences not specifically organised by the COST Action.

Conference Grants – Eligibility

The following eligibility criteria applies for MitoEAGLE members:

1. Conference Grants are exclusively reserved for PhD students and ECI’s with a primary affiliation in an institution located in an ITC.

2. The applicant must make an oral/poster presentation at the conference in question and must be listed in the official event/conference programme. The main subject of the oral presentation / poster presentation / speech at the approved conference must be on the topic of the Action and must acknowledge COST.

3. The participation of each applicant must be pre-approved by the Action MC. Attendance at European conferences is preferred. However, conferences held elsewhere can also be considered.

Conference Grant - User guide

Evaluation and selection of applicants

The evaluation of each received Conference Grant application is performed by the Action’s MC.

The Action Chair (or Vice-Chair if the Action Chair is affiliated to the Grant Holder Institution) or an appointed Coordinator / Committee can assume this responsibility if the Action’s MC gives them the mandate to perform this task on their behalf.

The evaluation criteria defined by the Action’s MC should be communicated to all potential applicants. The selection of successful applicants must be done so in consideration of the scientific scope of the proposed mission and how the mission can support the Action in achieving its scientific objectives.